CPR

C.P.R.

By Paige Nienaber

CPR Promotional Check-Up - Mar 15, 2016

March 15, 2016

More Tini's

One of the stations has a bar that wants to do a free Martini night geared at women. I'm not a woman (though I have a girl's name) and I don't drink martinis. So I reached out to the lovely and talented Kathy Curtis formerly of WSJT/Tampa and Lacey Macleod of (Major) Airlines.:

From Kathy:

Well everyone likes something for free! Free Martini glass - with station logo!? Not fun enough? Well how about this: When I drink them, I like them slightly dirty - meaning olive juice in the vodka. So maybe you could play off the phrase, "straight up", "slightly dirty" or "very dirty"? Maybe play games for prizes - i.e. a girl gets on stage and people shout out if they think she's a straight up girl or slightly dirty or a very dirty martini drinker? If they guess right, she gets a prize etc.

From Lacey:

If it's martini night, make it a Vegas theme. Have fake gambling for prizes. Or have a showgirl contest. Or make everyone dress up like Cher. Or make it a swingers party.

From Paige:

Do a Teeny Dress Party. Because I don't like martinis but I loves me some teeny dresses.

Stickers & Street Teams

"But Paige, in a PPM World, what's the inherent value of having bumperstickers and presence on the streets?" I don't know. Maybe they help keep you from being any more obscure, off-the-radar and irrelevant than you already are. This isn't the Witness Protection Program.

You RARELY see a great station that has not cemented loyalty with the audience. You don't get brand loyalty by sending spam to the database. You get it:

By having a good and consistent product.

By living up to your license and being a part of the community.

By shaking a buttload(tm) of hands.

The first one is hard enough. The last two are harder. But that's how you do it. We'll start with...

Stickers

There are two reasons to do stickers:

To make money

To elevate the profile for pennies in the marketplace

Sticking bricks of stickers on the counter at AM/PM mini marts will make you money. But 1 in a 100 (maybe) will end up on a car. To do that, you do the big mega-sticker stops. 'PGC, Wild in Tampa, Wild in SFO, Z-90, Jamz in Orlando, Jamz in Birmingham, Wired in Philly, KSFM in Sacramental, KUBE in Seattle have all done these...and owned that position.

And you can make money off these. The last one I went to in Tampa had thirteen paying clients involved.

How do you get stickers on cars? YOU PUT THEM ON YOURSELF.

Street Team

If you aren't working the schools for interns, you are really running out of time. Running a spot and soliciting for them will fail. You need to go out and recruit.

A market the size of Denver? You want 25 to start the summer.

Then, you want to train them. Giving them a manual to read will fail. Street School. A day AWAY from the station. Radio stations suck the vibe out of them the first day. Have fun. Give them their names for the summer. Brainstorm. Eat. Play games. Teach them how to set up a remote. How to hand a sticker to a listener. How to talk to a client. Everything.

And then you need to find the best and brightest and make them your Street General. The person who will coordinate and run and motivate and discipline and troll the newspapers and websites and press releases for places for the station to be. Every day.

Paige Nienaber is VP/Fun 'N Games for Clifton Radio and C.P.R. Between the two entities he promotional-consults over 50 stations across the U.S. and Canada. He writes a daily promotions/marketing piece for AllAccess.com and his own website is www.cpr-promotions.com. Paige's hobbies are playing with guns in the quiet and darkness of his room at night, Brazilian Exchange Students, and C. Thomas Howell movies.